Document Reveals Columbus, Ohio Voters Waited
Hours as Election Officials Held Back Machines by Bob Fitrakis
www.dissidentvoice.org
November 16, 2004First Published in
The Free Press

One
telling piece of evidence was entered into the record at the Saturday,
November 13 public hearing on election irregularities and voter suppression
held by nonpartisan voter rights organizations. Cliff Arnebeck, a Common
Cause attorney, introduced into the record the Franklin County Board of
Elections spreadsheet detailing the allocation of e-voting computer machines
for the 2004 election. The Board of Elections’ own document records that,
while voters waited in lines ranging from 2-7 hours at polling places, 68
electronic voting machines remained in storage and were never used on
Election Day.

The Board of Elections
document details that there are 2886 “Total Machines” in Franklin County.
Twenty of them are “In Vans for Breakdowns.” The County record acknowledges
2886 were available on Election Day, November 2 and that 2798 of their
machines were “placed by close of polls.” The difference between the
machines “available” and those “placed” is 68. The nonpartisan Election
Protection Coalition provided legal advisors and observed 58 polling places
in primarily African American and poor neighborhoods in Franklin County.

An analysis of the Franklin
County Board of Elections’ allocation of machines reveals a consistent
pattern of providing fewer machines to the Democratic city of Columbus, with
its Democratic mayor and uniformly Democratic city council, despite
increased voter registration in the city. The result was an obvious
disparity in machine allocations compared to the primarily Republican white
affluent suburbs.

Franklin County had
traditionally used a formula of one machine per 100 voters, with machine
usage allowable up to 125 votes per machine. The County’s rationale is as
follows: if it takes each voter five minutes to vote, 12 people an hour, 120
people in ten hours and the remaining three hours taken up moving people in
and out of the voting machines.

Once a machine is recording
200 voters per machine, 100% over optimum use, the system completely breaks
down. This causes long waits in long lines and potential voters leaving
before casting their ballots, due to age, disability, work and family
responsibilities.

A preliminary analysis by
the Free Press shows six suburban polling places with 100 votes a machine or
less, and only one in the city of Columbus meeting or falling under the
guideline.

The legendary affluent
Republican enclave of Upper Arlington has 34 precincts. No voting machines
in this area cast more than 200 votes per machine. Only one, ward 6F, was
over 190 votes at 194 on one machine. By contrast, 39 Columbus city polling
machines had more than 200 votes per machine and 42 were over 190 votes per
machine. This means 17% of Columbus’ machines were operating at 90-100% over
optimum capacity while in Upper Arlington the figure was 3%.

In the Democratic
stronghold of Columbus 139 of the 472 precincts had at least one and up to
five fewer machine than in the 2000 presidential election. Two of Upper
Arlington’s 34 precincts lost at least one machine. In the 2004 presidential
election, 29% of Columbus’ precincts, despite a massive increase in voter
registration and turnout, had fewer machines than in 2000. In Upper
Arlington, 6% had fewer machines in 2004 One of those precincts had a 25%
decline in voter registration and the other had a 1% increase. Compare that
to Columbus ward 1B, where voter registration went up 27%, but two machines
were taken away in the 2004 election. Or look at 23B where voter
registration went up 22% and they lost two machines since the 2000 election,
causing an average of 207 votes to be cast on each of the remaining
machines. In the year 2000, only 97 votes were cast per machine in the
precinct. Thus, in four years, the ward went from optimum usage to system
failure.

Jeff Graessle, Franklin
County Election Operations Division Manager, told the Citizen’s Alliance for
Secure Elections (CASE) Ohio voting rights activists that Franklin County
does not use a simple 100 votes per machine guideline. Rather, they
allocated their machines in the 2004 election based on a new criteria
determined by ACTIVE registered voters. Hence, an affluent area like Upper
Arlington which has shown a consistent pattern of voters is rewarded with
more machines and fewer losses. A less affluent area of Columbus where
voters miss voting at more elections and may only come out in a hotly tested
election, like Bush-Kerry, are punished with fewer machines.

Of course, there’s a direct
correlation between affluence and votes for Bush and below medium income
areas and votes for Kerry. Franklin County, Ohio’s formula served to
disenfranchise disproportionately poor, minority and Democratic voters under
the guise of rewarding the “likely” voter or active registered voters.

Bob Fitrakis is a Professor in the Social and Behavioral Sciences
Department at Columbus State Community College. He has a PhD in Political
Science and a J.D. from The Ohio State University Law School. He is the
author of seven books, an investigative reporter, and Editor of the
Columbus Free
Press, where this article first appeared. He has won ten major
investigative journalism awards including Best Coverage of Politics in Ohio
from the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists. He served as an
international election observer in the 1994 presidential elections in El
Salvador and was the co-author and editor of the report to the United
Nations. He served as legal advisor for eight polling locations on Columbus'
Near East Side for the Election Protection Coalition.